The invention relates to a display device comprising at least one compartment, which compartment contains an ionizable gas, walls of the compartment being provided with electrodes for selectively ionizing the ionizable gas during operation, and a voltage being applied across the electrodes during operation.
Display devices for displaying monochromatic or color images comprise, inter alia, direct-current plasma-display panels (dc PDPs) and direct-current plasma-addressed liquid-crystal display devices (dc PALC-displays), both types of display devices preferably being of the thin type.
A display device of the type mentioned in the opening paragraph is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,431 (PHA 60 092). The thin-type display device described in said document comprises a display screen having a pattern of (identical) so-called data-storage or display elements and a plurality of compartments. Said compartments are filled with an ionizable gas and provided with electrodes for (selectively) ionizing the ionizable gas during operation. In the known display device, the compartments are mutually parallel, elongated channels (shaped in a so-called channel plate), which serve as selection means for the display device (the so-called plasma-addressed row electrodes). By applying a voltage difference across the electrodes in one of the channels of the channel plate, electrons are emitted (from the cathode) which ionize the ionizable gas, thus forming a plasma. If the voltage across the electrodes in one channel is switched off and the gas is de-ionized, the following channel is energized. On the display-screen side of the display device, the compartments are closed by a (thin) dielectric layer ("microsheet") provided with a layer of an electro-optical material and further electrodes which serve as so-called data electrodes or column electrodes of the display device. The display device is formed by the assembly of the channel plate with the electrodes and the ionizable gas, the dielectric layer, the layer of the electro-optical material and the further electrodes.
In a plasma-display panel, a plasma-discharge is used, on the one hand, to directly excite phosphors of desirable display elements or, on the other hand, to generate light (for example UV light) which is used to excite phosphors of desirable display elements.
A disadvantage of the known display device is that such display devices exhibit a relatively high energy consumption.